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01:10 - 16.12.06
Barriers
My youngest headed off to work this morning, as I was calling my chiropractor's office to see if they could fit me in today. I had left the request to the last minute because weather conditions seemed really unstable and unpredictable. If the next predicted storm had blown in earlier, I thought I might be better off not trying to travel given the state of that one ruptured blood vessel. No reason to put more stress on it.

As it turned out there was time for me at 10 in the am, so I left immediately, hoping to pick up a replacement printer cartridge before that time. The trip downtown was quiet being that rush hour was winding down. The ambient temperature was pleasant, so I walked to the usual place I buy electronic equipment. It was shut down completely. There was a development permit from the city pasted on the window, but the whole of the building was completely empty. I tried as many other places that I could think of downtown that might carry them. Either there was no stock or the places weren't open. Something that was consistently occurring with other businesses as well. Empty, echoing halls in the malls. I can't say if the labour shortage is to blame or if it was just that there were nearly empty malls - no shoppers two weeks before Christmas. There had been a news special the night before where people complained of lack of service from clerks, but my son, his wife and I all agreed that the people complaining had very high and unrealistic expectations of the retail staff. Having all done customer service work ourselves, we all know there are some shoppers who seem to expect to be pablum fed with no effort on their own part. I don't think if a customer walks into a big store and asks clerks from one department about goods available in another department that saying they don't know is bad service. In a lot of stores there are severe penalties for staff who leave their assigned responsibilities to go to another department. Why wouldn't the customer at least make the effort to get to the correct area before asking for help. It reminded me of the patients who would arrive at the rehabilitation department of the hospital where I once worked expecting someone else to exercise for them to rebuild their own damaged or atrophied muscles. Doesn't work. My guess is that most of the disposable income is in less hands, given the cost of living in the city, and that fewer numbers of shoppers are actually why the stores are closed.

It was sort of a theme for the day. The big ballyhoo over the lack of cabbies in the city was the other illusion. There are actually over 2000 registered cab drivers for a city of a million residents. Compare that with Vancouver that has 800 active cabs available to successfully serve their larger population. For the past few months my sons and I, when we've had to take cabs because of off peak transit service not being a reasonable alternative, have each experienced several occasions where we can't get through to the dispatchers of the various companies to book a ride - even in the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes we've been able to flag down an empty vehicle and sometimes we've finally gotten through to a company, but consistently the drivers are telling each of us when we ask, that they are often left sitting idle for long stretches of time - up to an hour - with no fare, because of the bottle neck at the dispatch office. They claim that the dispatchers are sitting on the calls and not relaying the consumer requests. I asked one cabbie why the dispatch calls weren't computerized to make things more efficient in peak periods. He said those instruments had been disabled. A similar pattern of problems arose about a decade ago. At that time, it ended up that the owners of the companies were holding the city to ransom to make changes to legislation and regulations that made a few of them very wealthy and powerful monopolies. It is interesting to note that this "shortage" of drivers is purported to be happening now right around the coldest and busiest season of the year. The cabbie I had today allowed he had had more work during the summer holidays - usually a much slower time. Perhaps the cab company owners are also trying to reduce wages and benefits for competent drivers so that they can drive them out of the labour pool, leaving less trained and therefore less expensive drivers available for hire. They could then bolster their current lobbying of the legislators to reduce the requirements for training and monitoring of the drivers that are on the roads based on that artifically induced shortage. We've asked the cabbies why they don't couteract the lies being bleated out by the owners through various media. They point out that the owners blackball any driver who dares to speak out, meaning they lose their means of making a living.

I arrived at the chiropractor's office feeling rather frustrated and very sore. I had thought maybe if I just rested enough, the spine and hip alignment would readjust themselves. I guess having other stressors acting on me the past month or two acted as barriers to progress. The upshot is that I found walking very difficult after that hour or so of trying to find a replacement cartridge. My chiropractor did manage to get a fair amount of movement going, while we talked about his family's Christmas plans, but he seemed to want me to be certain to return next week for another session. I can't manage that unless I ask my son to take more time off work and I don't feel right doing that. I'm not certain with colder weather forecast and the state of my sinuses if I could manage to get my granddaughter all the way down to his office and then back again by bus. I guess I could try taking a cab - if I could get through. We'll see.

Left his office and headed back home. A very nice retired lady asked if she could sit beside me on the train. I must have looked a little surprised as I stuttered that public transit meant she could sit almost anywhere she wanted. She agreed but noted that a lot of people acted really resentful when she tried to share their bench. Her comment was that sitting in the empty seats that face backward to the motion of the train made her nauseous. I can relate to that, although most days it doesn't bother me to travel backwards. My issue is with sitting next to people who are drenched in scents. Triggers my asthma big time. Similar outcomes with different triggers. She wanted to chat and that was fine. She said that she was on her way to volunteer for a charity at one of our casinos. She doesn't volunteer for any particular charitable group, but arrives at the casino to fill in when a charity finds they are short of volunteer chip runners. If those groups can't supply enough people to work as volunteers, then they lose their event and the funds they hoped to raise. We got into a discussion based on our collective experiences of the state of the volunteer community. The shrinking pool of available people who are asked to do more and more with less and less. She was travelling from her home in the far south to help out strangers from all over the city. We discussed gambling as a form of revenue for things like school funding. Personally I don't think parents should raise funds especially for things like textbooks that should be paid for out of taxes and revenue, that way because it validates a behaviour pattern that is very destructive to so many people. I agree that addicted gamblers will find other venues for the habit, but it is like sitting outside a bar and handing every drunk emerging from their sousing, keys to brand new cars so they can drive home - no questions asked. She had just received an award from one of the big volunteer support agencies and was quite humbled by it. Given the amount of time she spends - about 20 days a month - helping improve the quality of life in our city I think it is well deserved many times over.

We parted at the end of the train ride. She hopped into a waiting cab - one of several idle cabs - at the bus turnaround while I climbed on the bus that would take me to the grocery store. I realized at that point that I was feeling really ill as the effects of the work my chiropractor had done started to take their toll. I debated going straight home and trying to shop tomorrow, but given the bottlenecked dispatch issue with cabs and being a weekend away from Christmas, I decided not to gamble on not being able to find a ride home tomorrow. The walk through the aisles seemed much longer than usual, but the time in the store was the same as always. I had to ask the packer twice to not put the cat litter bags under the buggy because they tore so easily. That caused a bit of a stir, because I was directly countermanding the training the store gives their staff. However I hate paying out any money when half the product won't be available to me by the time I get home. Hope it doesn't cause the young fellow any harm, but both the cashier and the store manager were listening as I insisted that the packing accommodate my requests. Maybe I'm an unreasonable shopper too, after all. I did manage to get a cab within about ten minmutes of calling and getting busy signals on two phone lines - the instore line and the regular phone. I was feeling even sicker so I was grateful for the break from someone else's power play. I wonder if the cab company owners understand that they are putting some people at great risk by withholding their services in this way.

Arrived home to find that the locks had been relocked and the newspapers - which hadn't been delivered when I left home - sitting on my kitchen table. Friendly burglar? I was standing by the phone so I called my youngest's cell phone, hoping that my guess about him having left work early was correct. Seemed more sensible than walking around the house looking for a gentleman bandit. As it turned out he had left work early and was back in his bed, because he had been feeling sick himself. It turned out that he hadn't even arrived at his office. Just reached the train station and took a return bus home. We put the groceries away and I made him a light lunch. I was too nauseous to try anything at that point, but did manage to get some of the egg nog I had just bought down and went to bed. I had meant to finish the work I have left for the post/pre-election assignments, but no cartridge and the sickness precluded that. I did manage to catch up all my bill payments and get a load of laundry done, so I guess the day wasn't a total write off - just not what I had hoped to accomplish. Emailed help at diaryland about those older entries not showing up again too. Someday all the effort to get things rolling should payoff, right dear diary? Need more rest now though. Good night dear diary.

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